1. Technical Field
The present inventions relate to wireless phone lotteries and, more particularly, relate to messaging for placing variable SMS lottery entries.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lotteries are known to be played online and over mobile telephones. One common way to pay a lottery over a mobile telephone has been to use text messages also known as the Short Messaging Service (SMS).
One way of playing the lottery by the SMS messages was that a mobile phone operator would charge a customers account for each message. Each message sent to certain lottery phone numbers were billed at a set rate. For example, for each message to a lottery or charity would cost the sender one dollar ($1) on the sender's phone balance. The mobile phone operator would know that each lottery SMS message was worth this one dollar and would deduct this one dollar from the sender's phone balance. The sender would not need to send any money to play the lottery, because the money was charged to the sender's phone balance. The lottery player would SMS text message his or her number pick choice to the phone number for the lottery. If the lottery player desired to pay the lottery more then once, then the player would send more than one text message.
An improved way to make lottery orders by text messaging over a mobile phone is needed.